This paper presents a status report of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) on two crucial development parameters—inequality and poverty—that have a significant bearing on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; especially SDG-1 and SDG-10). The paper tracks the origins and movements of absolute and relative poverty, …
India witnesses hotter summers, shorter winters. Shape of things to come? Carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere is held as one of the primary reasons for glaciers melting but it could also be wreaking havoc with the climate. The projected rate of warming is much higher than the observed changes …
Russian authorities have withdrawn a key permit to the world's largest liquefied natural gas (lng) project off the coast of Sakhalin Island on environmental grounds. Energy analysts, however, interpret the move as an attempt by Russia to wrest back control of its natural resources from large oil multinationals. Sakhalin's oil …
Five nations bordering the Caspian Sea have reached an agreement to safeguard the waterbody and also pave the way for an equitable sharing of its resources. The treaty, called the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, came into force on August 12, 2006, …
An oil spill has occurred in one of Russia's largest export pipelines, polluting about 10 sq km of forests and contaminating local water sources. The country's ministry of natural resources has termed the accident a potential ecological disaster, say media reports. The leak was the result of a crack in …
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently ordered the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline to be built more than 40 km from the un -protected heritage site of Lake Baikal. Putin said the pipeline must be rerouted since Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, was home to more than 1,000 …
spilling on oysters: The Far North District Council of New Zealand said it will spend US $3.6 million to reduce the risk of sewage spills in the environmentally sensitive areas of Paihia, Haruru Falls and Waitangi off its shores. This comes after local oyster farmers said they would sue the …
the recent dispute between Ukraine and Russia that disrupted the supply of gas to Europe has spurred a new initiative in the European Commission. The commission has proposed a common European Union energy policy and has asked the European Union (eu) to diversify its energy supplies and consider stockpiling gas …
China and Russia will jointly monitor cross-border rivers to ensure water quality. An agreement on the issue was recently signed in Bejing, following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao in Kuala Lumpur last year. They had discussed the Songhua river chemical spill that …
Environmental violators in Russia will have to pay heavier fines following a recent federal law passed by president Vladimir Putin. The law introduces changes to the
Russia recently imposed a ban on salmon imports from Norway from January 1, 2006. Moscow cited dangerously high levels of lead and cadmium in the fish and inadequate Norwegian monitoring system, as reasons for the ban. Government vets found lead 18 times above safety levels and cadmium 3.5 higher in …
Environmentalists have criticised the proposed route for an oil pipeline from Siberia to Russia's Pacific coast, saying it could send 4,000 tonaes of crude spilling into Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater body, in just 20 minutes, if ruptured. It passes within 800 metres of the lake and it also …
Cryosat, a sattelite of the European Space Agency (esa), plumetted north of Greenland close to the region of the Lincoln Sea near North Pole, with no consequences to populated areas. The us $168 million worth satellite took off from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, aboard a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, Rockot. It …
Lithuania is up in arms against a recent gas pipeline agreement between Germany and Russia. The pipeline under the Baltic Sea would disturb stockpiles of Hitler's chemical weapons lying on the bed of the Baltic Sea and would lead to an environmental disaster, warns Lithuanian prime minister Algirdas Brazauskas. Analysts …
there is real bad news on the global warming front. Stealthily-rising temperature has taken its toll, now, on Siberia's wetlands. They lay frozen for millennia, until now. Receding glaciers or ice-cover are already legion; these no longer qualify as good copy. But what's happening in Siberia has serious ecological consequences. …
Russia is currently battling a strain of bird flu that can infect humans. On August 2, 2005, authorities of Novosibirsk in Siberia said they had decided to slaughter 65,000 birds at 13 locations; the move followed detection of more cases of the h5n1 strain of bird flu. The government has …
bird flu in russia: Russia's emergencies ministry declared on July 21, 2005, that the country's first case of bird flu, the strains of which can infect humans and be fatal, had been detected in a village in Siberia's Novosibirsk region. "Numerous birds have died...and an investigation showed the presence of …
Conservationists have disapproved as inadequate a recent move by oil major Shell to protect the western grey whales along the eastern shore of Russia's Sakhalin Island. Shell announced on March 30, 2005 that it will not route its multibillion-dollar oil pipeline through the whales' feeding ground. The pipeline will be …
• Ukraine and Turkmenistan are going to propose the establishment of a consortium with Russia and Kazakhstan for transporting gas to Europe. This was announced by Ukraine's deputy prime minister Anatoly Kinakh after Turkmenistan's president Saparmurat Niyazov and Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko held talks during the latter's two-day official visit …
